"Copy protected" audio CDs & installing the Sony rootkit

In 2005, it was revealed that the implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs distributed by Sony BMG installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system

Imagine someone buys a music CD in a store. They go home and put it into theircomputer to listen to it. Without their knowledge, a program is installed. Thisprogram secretly checks whether that person started a program to copy CDs, and if so,forces them t

十年前的今天，電腦安全專家 Mark Russinovich（他目前擔任微軟 Azure 的 CTO）發表了 Sony BMG Rootkit 相關資料，這個在 DRM 全盛時期時由 Sony 裝在所有 CD 上的「木馬程式」，會在用電腦讀取 CD 時，在未經許可之下自動偷偷把自己安裝到電腦上。 這個小程式不僅佔用系統資源且無法移除，同時還會主動將使用者聽歌的資訊回傳給...

Sony BMG, under pressure from a widespread outcry, released an “uninstaller” that was meant to remove the rootkit, but actually only unmasked hidden files, did not remove the kit and installed more software that could not be uninstalled.

索尼BMG搞砸了它的最初反應：「大多數人甚至都不知道rootkit是個什麼東西，他們為什麼要關心這個呢？ 」時任索尼BMG全球數字業務總裁的托馬斯·何塞臭名昭著的原話如此說道。

EFF also asked Sony BMG to pay all consumer costs associated with the damage caused by the XCP or SunnComm MediaMax technology and compensate people for the time effort and expense required to verify that their computer was or was not infected with the ro

根據國外科技媒體報導指出，唱片公司Sony BMG 為了防止使用者盜拷光碟，自今年（2005年）出貨的音樂光碟，其數位版權管理軟體（digital rights management；DRM）採用了Rootkit技術，在使用者不知的情況下讓Rootkit潛入使用者電腦。